Falling From High Places (Falling Through Lost Spaces)
by XSilverLiningsX
Summary: [Modern Superheroes AU, Part 4: Prequel] Before they were the Phantom and the Jade Fox, they were simply orphans of circumstance.
1. Chapter 1

"AGAIN! Do it again!" At eight years old, Sylas hung onto every word that fell from his older brother's mouth. Right now, he was actually hanging onto a tree branch and failing to pull himself up. The boy's grip slipped and he dropped onto the grass butt-first with a wince.

Ten years older but not that much wiser, Levi laughed at his younger brother's most recent failed attempt to climb the shortest tree in the lush backyard of their massive oriental-styled mansion. When the young man finally stopped laughing, thanks to a hard kick aimed at his shin, he held out his empty hands.

Sylas slapped the paring knife that he'd liberated from the kitchens into his brother's hand. Crossing his arms across his chest, Sylas watched carefully as his brother called upon magic that had expressly been forbidden by their mother and slowly created a ghostly mirror-image of the real knife. After a quick flick of his wrist, the ghostly dagger materialized into physicality.

Sylas eagerly grabbed both knives and ran back to the tree, using the knives to roughly hack his way up the tree and onto the branch closest to the ground. Unfortunately, the magic dagger expired just when Sylas was going to climb onto the branch, leaving him dangling with one arm yet again.

"LEVI! AGAIN!"

"Make it yourself, you goblin! You're holding it!"

Sylas dropped down from the branch, this time landing on his feet. He stared hard at the knife, his brows furrowing in concentration. After a moment, his shoulders slumped.

"I can't do it…"

"You're not trying hard enough, Sylas." Levi walked over and grabbed his younger brother's hands. "You have to feel the magic first, and then imagine it forming in your other hand. _Then_ you can force it into the shape of the knife. Stop expecting a new knife to come out of nowhere."

Sylas's tongue stuck out of his mouth as he concentrated. A faint wisp of ghostly magic formed in his empty palm, but dissipated after a few seconds.

"Well, that's a good start. Keep practicing and you'll be able to copy anything in no time."

A shrill beeping came from Levi's pocket and the young man took out his cell with a sigh as he answered the call. "Levi speaking. No, Lady Syl is not home right now. Ah, yes, I see. I will make sure that she knows. Yes. Yes, thank you for letting me know."

Sylas ignored his brother in favor of trying to get his magic to form in his hand again.

* * *

"Sylas?! Sylas, where are you!"

Sylas looked up in alarm from where he was reading a manga and ran to the doorway of his home's library room; Levi _never_ yelled like that unless it was an emergency. His older brother rounded the corner and immediately spotted him.

"What's going on—?!" Sylas was promptly grabbed and tugged as his brother didn't even bother to slow down as he kept running. The boy almost tripped several times in keeping up.

"Oh Goddess, they're here, fuck, I have to, where the fuck is— right, yes, that way! Here!"

Levi skidded to a stop at a room at the very back of the mansion, which was a storeroom for all of the preserved and canned food. He dragged his younger brother over to a corner and kicked up a corner of a dusty rug. A trap door was under the rug. Levi immediately hauled it open, the hinges creaking from age, and shoved his brother into the small crawl space.

"Levi, what's going on?" Sylas knew something was incredibly wrong and he felt absolute terror grip his heart when his brother unhooked one of the daggers from his belt and handed it to him.

"I'm going to find Mother. Stay here and don't make a noise, alright? I'll be right back. Don't open the latch for anyone."

A hand ruffled through his messy hair for a moment before the trap door swung shut over his head and locked, leaving Sylas in barely-visible darkness. His fingers tightened around the sheathed dagger.

The silence was deafening. Sylas didn't know how long he'd been sitting in the space, barely breathing, until he mustered the courage to feel around the space. His hands felt three walls and nothing to his left, so he crawled through and kept crawling while using a hand to feel for the walls. Sometimes the walls diverged into two or more paths that ended with dead ends and some muffled screaming coming from the floor above him.

Gunshots. Steel ringing. Shouts.

Sylas kept crawling in the darkness with one hand gripped tight around his brother's dagger. He followed the indistinguishable voices whenever he could, but more often than not the voices would abruptly stop after footsteps rushed in and guns went off.

He didn't know how long he'd been inching his way through the maze underneath his home, but eventually he saw a sliver of light slicing through the darkness – a gap in the floor! Sylas moved in that direction, eager to see light again.

At the end of the pathway, the sliver of light coming through a warped floor board was barely enough for him to see that there was another trap door above him. He was about to try and push it up when he footsteps and voices appeared.

Sylas adjusted himself so that he could peek through the gap in the floor board. He could just barely make out the wide windows and curtains to the side and some overturned furniture – a chair, a dresser, a changing screen. Some booted feet.

He recognized the changing screen. This was Mother's room, but Mother wasn't here…?

A scream. The sound of ringing steel. Something heavy hitting the floor. Silence.

"See? Lady Sylvia, _this_ is what happens when you go against the Black Mage." An unknown man growled.

"You killed my husband, my son, and all of my servants. You might as well kill me now, Damien. You will get nothing from me."

Footsteps. A person being dragged.

Sylas bit his tongue hard when Mother appeared in his line of sight, her white dress soaked in blood as she was forced to kneel facing his direction. He tasted iron.

"Ah, well, it's good for you then that I have orders to kill you once I finish off your youngest son. Where is that little snotball, anyways? Not even your precious Levi would say a word when I cut off his hands."

Sylas' Mother said nothing and stared forward, her back as straight and strong as tempered steel. Her mouth twitched imperceptibly when she noticed that a slight glint of an eye peeked out from the tiny gap in the floor boards.

"He is safe. You will never find him. Do what you must and be gone." Sylas' Mother dismissed her assassins with an unimpressed look.

"Che. Fine. I'll be sure to take a picture of the look on your little boy's face when I tell him that I killed his mother so easily, right before I slice his head off too."

Sylas flinched.

A sword swung.

A headless body slumped to the floor.

Mother's head carelessly grabbed by the hair and stuffed into a bulging black bag that dripped blood.

Sylas could feel that dagger in his grip growing unbearably hot.

"What—"

"Hey, that's—"

Sylas could feel every blade in the room splitting once, twice, three times…

Sylas screamed, and death rained from above.

* * *

When Sylas was eight, he killed his first man.

It would not be his last.

* * *

Ainle was the city of his third foster home in the span of two months.

The foster home in Ainle was also the only place that Sylas had stayed in for more than a week before trying to run away.

"Sylas, come on!" A tugging on his hand brought Sylas back into the present. A gap-toothed, pigtailed girl with a sweet smile tugged harder and Sylas finally relented and started walking.

"Lynn, where are we going?" It was easy to hop the fence of their foster home and make a break for the small convenience shops lining the cramped and dirty urban street they lived in.

"I found a machine that didn't have a camera, hurry up!"

"You got the coin?"

"Yes, I have the coin!"

The vending machine was in a shady alcove next to an alleyway that smelled like piss and mostly contained gum and chips, but Sylas hadn't eaten breakfast (the foster parents that he and Lynn lived with often forgot to leave breakfast for them when rushing out the door) so it all looked absolutely divine.

"I want the chips with the pancake flavor."

Sylas wrinkled his nose. "Really? Those taste like butt."

"So? What do you want?" Lynn crossed her arms across her chest with a toothy grin. To Sylas, nothing seemed to phase her or make her stop smiling; it was both comforting and slightly unnerving.

Sylas looked thoughtfully over the choices. "I want… the donuts, with the powder. I've never had that."

"Okay, then do the thing. We need two dollars. Uhm… eight quarters."

A quarter dropped into his palm. Sylas swallowed and closed his eyes, squeezing the coin between his hands. After a moment, he opened his eyes again.

Nine quarters – one real and eight not – sat innocently in his hands.

All eight phantom coins went into the machine. Sylas made sure to keep clenching the real quarter until their snacks fell down into the box down below. Once Lynn held out the snacks with a happy laugh, Sylas exhaled in relief. He passed the real quarter over to Lynn in exchange for the donuts.

"Whoo! Food!" Lynn grabbed Sylas' hand and tugged him away from the vending machine with a skip in her step. "Let's go find Ellis and share some with him!"

Sylas shrugged, but the boy couldn't help but smile as he let his foster-sister lead the way to the orphanage that was a few blocks down from their foster home.


	2. Chapter 2

The dial tone rang for the tenth time and Lynn kicked a pebble before giving up and putting her cell phone back into the pocket of her school uniform's jacket. Smoothing her skirt down, the girl took a seat on the curb of her private school's pick-up and drop-off zone and idly scratched at the cracks in the concrete.

A police car slowly idled up the zone before stopping a few meters away. Lynn watched as a policewoman exited the car and walked slowly towards her. When the policewoman was close enough, she squatted down and smiled gently at her.

"Are you Lynn Shinsoo?"

"Yes." Lynn blinked.

"Are your parents Aria and Phan Shinsoo?"

"Yes. Why?"

The policewoman sighed.

* * *

When Lynn was eight, a kindly woman sat her down in the middle of a bustling police station and told her that her parents would not be able to pick her up from school anymore because they had gone into the arms of the Goddess from a car accident.

The kindly woman also asked if she had any family that she would like to stay with.

"My sister… my sister had gone to the Goddess too, last year. Lung cancer. I'm the only one left."

The policewoman shook her head sadly, but then showed her a picture. "There is a man claiming to have been married to your sister. Do you know him?"

Lynn recognized the man. "He was. But he didn't visit at all after Sister died, until last week. I heard him arguing with Mommy about money before Daddy kicked him out. I wasn't supposed to eavesdrop, it's rude, but I was there and—"

Lynn burst into tears.

Lynn's brother-in-law ends up arrested a few days later for the murders of Aria and Phan Shinsoo, co-owners of a multi-million dollar corporation that sold vending machines for snacks and sodas all around the world.

After the trial, Lynn finds herself in a foster home in Ainle with nothing but a bag of her clothes and a promise from her family's lawyer that all of her family's money will be in safe keeping until she is of age to inherit.

Several months into her stay at the foster home with a handful of other children, a scowling boy arrives at the home. His name is Sylas and he reminds her of a porcupine, which is her favorite animal.

Lynn makes the most impulsive decision in her life and latches onto this porcupine-boy, no matter how much or how loudly he protests at being smothered with _cooties_.


	3. Chapter 3

Two months before Sylas and Lynn's 9th birthdays, the Fomors come.

The Royal Army abandons them; they took all of the ships and burned the docks behind them to ensure that the fomors couldn't follow them back to the mainland.

When the fomors breech the gates and stream in, all of the adults around them turn into a panicky throng of terrified people. The children – foster children, street urchins, the _unloved_ — are left to scramble and hide on their own in the hopes of surviving the assault.

When the alarms sound, Sylas stuffs as many knives and snacks as he can steal from the kitchen into a ragged backpack. He grabs Lynn by the hand and they **_run_**.

They run, and they keep on running even as the buildings around them start collapsing into chunks of twisted debris and choking ash from the fiery abominations flung into the city from massive catapults and cannons.

They eventually stumble over a door to a basement, half-hidden underneath a staggered arrangement of fallen concrete from the building next door. With no options left and their lungs burning for air that wasn't choked with ashes and dust, they descend into the dark and cramped basement.

They huddle in the corner opposite the door and behind some barrels, clutching at each other and at the backpack that miraculously had stayed with them the entire time. Sylas pulls out a few knives, his knuckles going white from how tightly his fingers were clenched around them, and keeps his eyes glued onto the tiny slit of light coming through the crack in the door.

Minutes pass.

Hours pass.

Every so often, the screen light of Lynn's cell phone chases away the darkness as she checks the time, her messages, and call history.

Nothing. ( _No one cared?_ )

Later, the screams and the explosions stop and are replaced with deadening silence that pricks at both of their nerves. They each take turns eating and watching the door, but eventually the adrenaline and energy runs out and they settle down to sleep on the floor.

Lynn's shaking hand nudges Sylas' and slips to hold it tightly. The boy squeezes back, nervous and terrified and _tired_.

Both kids awake when they are picked up by the scruffs of their soot-smeared shirts. In the darkness of the basement, all they could see is battered armor, a giant, gleaming sword, and a glowing red eye.

Lynn screams and twists, trying to scratch at any part she could reach.

Sylas kicks wildly and sends his phantom daggers at the _Thing's_ guts, only for the daggers to scrape ineffectively against metal and leather.

"Hey, hey, fucking, ugh stop kicking, calm down and SHUT UP. I'm here to help you!" The hiss came from a human. Male.

The two stop struggling. The man unceremoniously drops them on the ground.

"Listen. The RA's long gone and the fomors are sniffing around for valuables. As far as I know, everyone's dead in this city except for you two. If you want to live, keep your mouths shut and let me handle the fomors. Got it?"

"You do anything to us, and I'll kill you!" Sylas snarls and helps Lynn back up. He snatches up the backpack and hands it to his foster-sister.

"I don't doubt it, brat. Now shut up and follow me. Don't say anything, don't look at anything other than me, and ignore the fomors." Surprisingly enough, the man takes their hands in his own, their tiny fingers and palms dwarfed by his huge ones.

He leads them out of the basement and into the remnants of Ainle; a thousand smoldering buildings billowing black smoke into a blood-red dawn greets them to the arrival of a new day.


End file.
